Free and Open to the Public, First Saturdays Every Month
In the tradition of the Great Books Program at St. John’s College, the 2025/2026 Great Books Seminars, organized by Ian Panchèvre, explores three foundational works of dystopian literature: We (Zamyatin), Brave New World (Huxley), 1984 (Orwell)
We (1921), Brave New World (1932), and 1984 (1949) form the foundational trilogy of modern dystopian literature. Each book offers a vision of technologically enabled control that shaped how the 20th and 21st centuries imagine the relationship between the individual and the state.
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We was written in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and banned in the Soviet Union for decades thereafter. The first of the three, We introduces many of the genre’s defining ideas: the mechanization of society, the re-engineering of human life, and the erasure of individuality in the name of collective perfection. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World responds with a different fear – not of repression through terror, but of a society pacified by pleasure, conditioning, mass entertainment, and the steady erosion of individual choice. In contrast, George Orwell’s 1984 was shaped by the rise of fascism and Stalinism; it pushes these themes into a dark vision of total surveillance, linguistic manipulation, and psychological domination.
Taken together, these novels chart modern society’s constellation of anxieties about technology, power, and human freedom. They ask whether societies can engineer happiness, whether truth can survive in the age of propaganda, and what becomes of the human soul when efficiency, stability, or security are elevated above all else.
Nearly a century after they were written, these works feel newly urgent; their themes echo in debates about AI, algorithmic governance, digital surveillance, bio-engineering, and the fragility of democratic institutions. Our seminar will explore each novel on its own terms and in conversation with the others, tracing how their visions resonate with the present moment and with one another.
Our conversation will occur over twelve sessions, beginning December 6, 2025 and ending December 5, 2026. For each seminar, you can expect to read approximately 60 pages (≈ 2 hours of reading).
•December 6, 2025: We (Records 1–10)
• January 3, 2026: We (Records 11–20)
• February 7: We (Records 21–30)
• March 7: We (Records 31–40)
• April 4: Brave New World (Ch. 1–3)
• May 2: Brave New World (Ch. 4–7)
• June 6: Brave New World (Ch. 8–12)
• July: Break
• August 1: Brave New World (Ch. 13–18)
• September 5: 1984 (Part I Ch. 1–8)
• October 3: 1984 (Part II Ch 1–5)
• November 7: 1984 (Part II Ch 6–10)
• December 5: 1984 (Part III Ch 1–6)
PLEASE NOTE: Landa Library will be closed for repairs beginning in late January, look for a new location to be announced mid-January, 2026
Location: TO BE DETERMINED
Arrival: 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Seminar: 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
If there are any questions, please contact Paul Martin at 210-722-0400 / paul@martincapital.com; or Charles Massiatte at
210-724-6571 / CharlesMassiatte@gmail.com.
Hope to see you there!
